Propellerhead Gear: ThinkPad X301 "The Ultimate Road Warrior"

Now that I've finished the Compact DSLR System series, I thought I'd start another. Something that fits with my resolutions for this year. In short: I'm going to "Love What I Have"! My plan to to complete, optimize, and finish off. With the exception, of the already started rebuild of my desktop workstation; I plan on changing very little. Each month, I'm going to examine at least one of my core devices or systems. 

So, today, I'm going to start with my main "mobile system"; the ThinkPad X301. I just love this machine. There's virtually nothing, I'd change about it. For me, the size is perfect. I really like the resolution of 1440 x 900 in the widescreen 13" format. Yes, it does cause me to scroll more when reading, but I find that I regularly set two windows side by side while working. And when I'm traveling or simply catching up with a missed TV show at home, I really like the 16:9 ratio as well. Sure, I'd have loved for it to be a better panel, even an IPS maybe, but I find the X301's to be somewhat better than the original in the X300. Enough so that I can live with it. What else do I love about it? It's thin AND light. At the time of it's introduction, the X300 was one of the thinnest in the world, yet still was able to have an optical drive! In typical ThinkPad fashion, the keyboard is fantastic (and always key), comes equipped with the TrackPoint pointing stick. 

Also, I love that I'm done with it as well! The RAM is maxed out at the chipset's 8Gb limit, and although drive could be larger, I've decided this last upgrade to the 160Gb, Intel 320 is the end of the line. For what this machine does for me, the Samsung 128Gb was actually fine size-wise, but when I found the Intel, new for $50 on the local Craigs List, it was a no-brainer. What that upgrade gives me isn't so much the 32Gb of extra space, but that this drive has TRIM, which should keep it running well for the duration of it's time with me. Furthermore, the bump in capacity combined with the installation of Google Drive actually leaves me with 105Gb of free space from the formatted size of 149Gb. Nice!!!

If I do need more storage when out and about, I have this. This, is the Iomega SSD Flash external drive. When introduced in 2010, in capacities of 64Gb, 128Gb, and 256Gb, they were $229, $399, and $749 respectively! YOW!!! Last year (I can say that now), I found an eBay seller out of China (where else?), selling the case for about $14. Actually, it was the whole thing, down to the retail box with instructions..... except w/o the SSD inside. So, in went the original 64Gb, 1.8" Samsung drive, and whatta-ya-know..... my very own high speed external drive! Iomega claimed that these things are 10 times faster than a regular mechanical drive through USB 2.0 and even twice as fast as USB 3.0. 

What's this? It's my "rig" of course, or at least when it wants to travel in style, that is! It's a perfect fit and match inside this 3" Zero Halliburton computer attache in gunmetal grey. That's only if it needs to go out for formal occasions. Mostly, it travels in a plain black backpack that doesn't look like it carries anything more important than a few books and papers. The attache was an indulgence at about $65 off of eBay because I always wanted one. The backpack was basically free. I found some ThinkPad backpacks from an outfit in PA that I buy off-lease laptops from and was able to get one for about $20. When it showed up, I found that one of the accessory attachment loops was torn. So I contacted them to see if they had another to swap out. They didn't have an identical one, but sent me a similar one and told me just to keep the first bag...... so free..... with a torn loop that has since been cut off. 

There are a couple of other traveling companions for it of course. Both the ThinkPad mouse, and the Nokia BH-503 connect through Bluetooth, so that's convenient. They are also small and light.

These day though, all this nice "road-warrior" gear stays put up the office closet mostly. This being my typical position of use, but it's ready to go.... if and when it needs to!